The Indo-Myanmar Border Fence: Challenges and Way Forward
The nature of the Indo-Myanmar border offers numerous challenges for effective border management.
- Rohit Raj
- February 10, 2025
The nature of the Indo-Myanmar border offers numerous challenges for effective border management.
The Vibrant Village Programme (VVP) is a centrally sponsored scheme aimed at developing remote villages along India’s northern borders.
While the free movement regime did facilitate the hill tribes to maintain cross-border links, it also allowed insurgents and traffickers to freely enter and exit the country.
This book is an attempt to bring together documents and reports published by the government on border management. The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the problems India faces in managing its borders and its approach towards the challenge.
The notification regarding modification of area of jurisdiction of the BSF focuses on prevention of illegal migration and cross-border crimes. It is important that the BSF trains its personnel about various Acts and sections of the CrPC and work towards better coordination with the other agencies.
The Border Area Development Programme was initiated in the year 1986–87, to strengthen India’s security by ensuring developed and secure borders. Initially, the programme was implemented in the western border states to facilitate deployment of the Border Security Force. Later, the geographical and functional scope of the programme was widened to include eastern and northern sectors of India’s borders and as well as socio-economic aspects such as education, health, agriculture and other allied sectors. But, it is difficult to say that the implementation has been uniform in all the sectors.
On 19 December 2017, three days ahead of the scheduled 20th Round of Indo-China border talk between the Indian National Security Advisor (NSA), Ajit Doval, and China’s State Councillor, Yang Jiechi (the details of which are yet to be made public), the daily Times of India reported a statement by China that the Doklam standoff posed a ‘major test’ for the bilateral ties and that lessons should be learnt from it to avoid a similar situation of its kind in the future.1 China’s statement was made in the context of the face-off between Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PL
Implementation of high-tech solutions without adequately trained personnel is unlikely to help the Border Security Force achieve the goal of foolproof border surveillance.
For the financial year 2017-18, the Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) has been allocated Rs. 83,823 crore, a hike of around 11.5 per cent over that of the previous year. Though the Union government has been providing substantial budget support to the MHA to aid its reform and modernisation programs, the ministry’s efforts to bring about desired reforms have shown mixed results so far.